ya_assemble | [LN] Beat of His Own Drums [Open]

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[LN] Beat of His Own Drums [Open]

As soon as the yeti finished that beautiful, beautiful brand spankin' new not liberated from the trash drum kit, Raph had swooped in and commandeered it, dragging it off piece by piece to the room he'd also commandeered as his own when he'd first arrived.

"You can make another one," he'd shot back at the pouting yeti, who'd sighed and gotten back to work as he stole the cymbals.

It was a Pearl Export kit. Not exactly top of the line but solid, had a good sound just like the real thing (talk about trademark infringement, right?), and most importantly of all, it was new. Like so few of Raph's belongings were. In fact, the only belongings he had that weren't, ahem, "recycled," were things April and Casey had given him. Everything else was junk scavenged from the surface by Splinter - and then by him and his brothers when they started going up.

New drums. Actual new drums. And a new cd player. And new cds. He'd managed to grab a few new things, actual new things. For the first time in his life, he was playing on a new drum kit.

All the "you have to save all of existence" stuff aside, this place rocked.

That was why he was in his room banging away, sometimes playing very recognizable drums beats by themselves, sometimes in time with the original music. If it sounded like he was crazy enthusiastic about what he was doing, it was because he was.

He'd left his door open out of a general lack of consideration for others, but the noise didn't add much more noise pollution to the busy workshop than there was - and at least he was good. Very good, in fact.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"As if. They used to have a school-slash-orphanage for kids whose parents kicked them out when they got their powers, but then almost all of them just...woke up one day without their powers. No one really seems to know why or how. Molly's one of handful who kept hers, so they think they have some right to her. Even though she has no interest in staying with them -- believe me, we asked her."

Nico couldn't help but smirk a little.

"She actually punched her mutant celebrity crush out through the doors of a church and into a snowbank for being a jerk, according to what she's told us."

Raph smirked. Good on the kid.

"So these 'superheroes'-" three-fingered hands were pretty good at quotey fingers because they actually looked like quotes "-apparently think kidnapping is perfectly fine? How do they manage that potentially medal-winning bit of mental gymnastics?"

Nico had to admit, she was a little jealous of Raph's mad skills with the quotey fingers.

"Dunno. Like I said, we try to avoid chatting with any of them, if at all possible. There's a reason I sling spells first and ask questions later, and all of those reasons are 'superheroes are dumb'."

"It sounds a lot like things are bad unless they do them and then it's perfectly okay."

He was still preemptively resentful of her world's heroes, without ever having met them, for some of them being celebrities for being heroes.

Fuuuuck those guys. Yes, he was jealous.

"Like you keep saying little stuff here and there and it paints a picture that I think would be a lot uglier if I saw the whole thing."

"Don't get me wrong, they're great to have around when the world is going to explode or something," Nico said. "Usually, at least. Before we found out about our parents. But pretty much everything I've seen out of them since has been stupid over-dramatic reality TV-style crap.

"Like, every single team in the U.S. basically got into a huge fight over whether or not people with super powers should register with the government, right? Well, they were so busy fighting each other that me and my friends had to fight a monster the size of a skyscraper. Plus the fun experience of my second go 'round at breaking into a government facility to rescue someone, and that time was more similar to time number three than number one."

Time number three being the one where she and Raph met, if he remembered that bit of trivia she'd dropped.

"And after that was all over, all their government-trained heroes were pretty much instantly mowed down by the alien invasion. So as far as I can tell, they're just chugging liquid stupid now."

"So, they got into a big fight and basically risked people's lives and let people die and some of them were working with the same government that had creepy labs. And then they didn't even train the people they forced into it enough that they could actually survive."

Raph was allowed to be disgusted when Splinter had trained the hell out of his sons (and April). He was allowed to be disgusted when he and his brothers went at alien invasions with slightly-enhanced near-human abilities and weapons from feudal Japan, typically managed to save everyone, and didn't even take credit for it.

Okay, so they'd lost against the Kraang in the big invasion but that was after already having stopped one before, and they planned to go back and face impossible odds anyway once Leo was better. And yes, the canisters of ooze had hit a lot of people during that one fight in the Kraang ship but it was a fight and sometimes you couldn't control what happened in a fight. It wasn't really out of selfishness and ego and stupidity so much as the fight just not going well. Everything that could have gone wrong had.

That robot'd had surprise butt cannons, after all.

"I think the worst we ever did - aside from losing against a whole invasion force when we were hopelessly outnumbered and outmatched in a situation where all our enemies teamed up against us and just about anyone would lose - was have a fight go bad in one of the Kraang ships. It was out of control, a hatch accidentally got banged open, and a bunch of mutagen canisters got dumped all over New York. And you know what we did? We went out just about every night and tried to hunt down every. Single. Canister to try to get them before anyone got mutated. It wasn't even our fault but we figured it was still our responsibility to try to make it right."

He was actually angry now.

"We fight aliens with ninjutsu and weapons that were the height of technology in feudal Japan and we held off one alien invasion and saved like hundreds of hostages without them even knowing we did it. How. How are they messing up that badly? Me and my brothers and Casey and April aren't even superheroes and we suck it at less than that."

And they got to be celebrities. That was what was burning his nonexistent butt the most.

"And some of 'em get to be famous for it."

So offended.

"They're falling down on the job, hard," Nico agreed. "I can only hope the Skrull invasion pulls their heads out of their butts, because they either need to do that or they need to step aside and let people who aren't morons take over."

She shook her head. "It's bad enough that Alex's lie about calling them was plausible, it's worse when actually getting their attention is a disappointment."

She wasn't going to defend the superheroes of her world to him. Not after everything they'd done -- or failed to do -- for her and her friends.

Raph finally sat up again, picking up one of the comics he'd been reading and looking at it as if disappointed.

"Geez, with comics I like the grim n' gritty ones a lot, 'cause that's the way the world is, you know? But I also like the ones where people just figure out the right thing to do and act all selfless. Where, maybe even if people make mistakes or things go wrong, they move beyond that. Get above it." He went on ruefully, "Kinda sucks the fun out of these knowing that in places where superheroes are real, some of 'em don't have it together."

He glanced over at her.

"That's always the best part, seeing all the good stuff where people beat the odds and make the world better than it was and imagining it could be real somewhere. If you have a whole world of superheroes where a lot of them are messing things up like that, and they haven't been able to make the world into a really great place, then where are the places where people are trying their best just to help everyone 'cause it's right and it's not all about their egos?"

Edited 2014-12-19 08:28 (UTC)

"It's not all of them," Nico said, making a face. "Just most of them, especially the big name ones. The Young Avengers are pretty decent people, for all they're fans of the old guard." And dorks. Couldn't forget that. "Maybe when the old guard kill each other or die off saving the world from reality-eating menace and the kids my age take over, things will suck less." She shrugged again. "Maybe there are other realities where the super heroes do better. Maybe there are realities where they don't need super heroes because enough people just do the right thing because they should.

"There are worse realities than mine, so there might as well be better ones."

"I hope so. Uh, not that people die but just that it gets better where you're from. And that there are other places out there that are even better than that."

He turned a few pages of his comic to the ending, where the world was all all at peace and the aliens were thanking the space hero guy.

"You know, my brother Leo, when we were starting out, he cribbed all his inspiring leader speeches from this stupid sci fi show called Space Heroes. Fifteen years of training, pretty much from the moment we could walk, and still we really had no idea what we were doing. Sensei raised us to survive, not to save people, even if he supported it when it was clear we planned to fight the Kraang whether he wanted us to or not."

He kept his eyes on the comic panels.

"Sometimes you just need to think that somewhere out there people do the right things and everything works out, because then maybe it'll be possible where you are, too." He paused. "But I guess that's why we're here, right? To some kids, they see us as those people."

Edited 2014-12-19 08:59 (UTC)

"Yep. Fight a monster from beyond space and time that's already captured two-thirds of the local badasses and warped reality to such an extent that we got pulled through in the first place, all while acting as an inspiration for children." Nico said. "No pressure or anything."

She picked at her sewing, worrying some of the stitches, testing to make sure they'd hold up when she twisted and moved around in the results.

"Kinda weird, huh? I'm not much of a hero. I run when I can."

"Well, let's see: you were part of a group of teenagers and a little kid that had to fight against the ultimate evil authority figures - your own parents as supervillains - in a situation where you were mostly powerless and had no outside help, but you still stuck together, braved it out, and saved the world."

Raph kept turning the pages of his comic.

"It's supposed to be all unconscious on their part, right? Who do you think a kid or preteen's gonna identify with more? Some fearless adult hero or another powerless kid fighting to do the right thing even if they're fighting against the odds and afraid? Of course they'd want people like you and Molly." He turned another page. "If you can be brave and still save the day even when it's hard and when you're scared, they probably feel like they can. And they probably feel like you knowing what it feels like to be scared and powerless means you'll care about them enough to try to keep them safe."

Edited 2014-12-19 09:48 (UTC)

"We only managed to take our parents down because Alex wanted Karolina and Molly's parents dead and it didn't occur to him that I'd tell him where to shove his happily-ever-after," Nico countered. "And because some of our parents were on the fence about killing us. Whatever version of the story made it here, it was pretty obvious that it was sheer desperation and dumb luck that got us through all of that. And pretty much everything after. Not exactly something I'd look for, even unconsciously.

"I mean, you and your brother make sense, you're..." she gestured, trying to find the words to frame what she meant. "You're the kind of guys who go up against an alien invasion after they already chased you out of town once because it's the right thing to do. We took the first excuse someone handed us and let someone else take care of the mess."

He looked up from his comic again as Nico spoke and the corner of Raph's mouth quirked at her talking about telling this Alex guy where to shove it.

Did she not get how big a deal that was or something?

"Listen, you chose to go with him to try to stop it and that meant you were there when things went down and were able to take advantage of the situation and save the day. That's how it works. That's one of the biggest things Sensei drilled into us, how no plan ever ever survives the first encounter with the enemy. It's always adaptation and desperation and a lot of dumb luck."

He went on, "And we ran from an alien invasion, too. Yeah, we're going back, but who else can save the world? What would you do, if you were the only ones in the whole world that could? And it was either fight back or watch the aliens take over and mutate all of humanity until they eventually found and killed you for all the trouble you'd given them?"

He added, "Why, when the fight against Kuk is so one-sided, are you staying here to fight back, instead of finding somewhere in this world to hide or trying to find some magical way of going home and leaving the rest of us to fight?"

"We went because there was no where else to run and because our parents were guaranteed to be as unarmed as they were going to get; and even then Alex manipulated us into going in the first place by calling the cops to our hide-out." Nico shook her head. "He led us around by the nose right up until he woke me up to tell me that his end goal was keeping his parents from being killed."

She scowled across the bed at him. "I can't raise people from the dead or even guaranteed travel through time with my magic, I'm not about to fling myself into the sucking void between realities where Kuk is on the off-chance I can make it home, much less bring Molly with me. There's no where to run, so I might as well fight."

"Exactly," Raph said. "When all this is over and Leo's healed up, me and my brothers are heading back to New York because we're some of the idiots that live there. Because we live on Earth, too."

He went on, "Yeah, we wanna save people but don't make it out to be like it's somehow more noble than the kinda stuff you and your team do. And don't think for a second that running away is somehow less heroic than fighting a fight you can't win. Sometimes you have to run to live to fight another day. Sometimes you have to step back and let other people step up if you can't handle something, like all the times we let Splinter take over if we weren't good enough, or how we left New York in the hands of the army so they're least keeping things from spreading while we're away. We left it to them because we had to, because we'd be dead otherwise. Our dad was already gone and Leo was in a coma."

He shot her a very confused look. "You're not somehow less heroic than me and my brothers and our friends. When you're a ninja, you don't fight fair. You sneak, you deceive, you lie, you cheat, you steal, and when you're in over your head, you run. That's how you win and that's how you help other people because you survive to win. I don't know why you've got it in your head that self-preservation somehow makes you less noble or heroic but whoever taught you that is an idiot. It's not some kinda character trait that decides how good or bad you are, it's a tactic."

Edited 2014-12-19 11:32 (UTC)

"No one taught me anything, remember?" Nico said, pressing her lips into a thin line. "We're winging it. We're not super heroes, and--" She shook her head. Here was the crux of the matter, she supposed. "--I don't know why they'd reach for me and Molly when they've got options who are super heroes available. Ones my age who don't suck at what they're doing."

"You could say the same thing about Dipper and Mabel. Why go for them even though they're not superheroes at all?"

He held a hand to his chest, near where his plastron met his neckline - the place that the scientists in that creepy lab had started to saw into. It had long since healed up but the way he held his hand there made it look almost like he still felt vulnerable about it.

"But the three of you saved me and Mikey. You were the ones who were there, not some big shot superheroes. You got us out. You got everyone out even though some of 'em probably didn't deserve it and you torched the place to the ground when you saw the kinda evil they were getting up to. That says to me that you were the ones that should've been there."

He caught her gaze, green eyes practically beaming sincerity - and something else. Maybe admiration? Gratitude?

"So lemme tell you a little secret, as someone who's pretty tough and part of a pretty tough team - everybody's winging it. Even people who know what they're doing are winging it. Even if you can't see why those kids might want you here, it's clear as anything to me."

Nico sighed, looking over at him to keep arguing -- she could make arguments about how maybe Dipper and Mabel's story was the one that crossed realities, but there was no way that her and her friends were the only story that made it out of her universe -- but found herself flummoxed by the sheer sincerity of his expression. There wasn't a lot she could really argue with there.

"Yeah, well," she said, looking away to try and hide the smile curling her lips upward into her warming cheeks, "I guess I'll just take your word for it."

Was that a blush? Had he made her blush? His own cheeks grew just a little hot and he turned back to his comic.

Okay, so now what? That was, uh. He usually didn't get that openly sincere. He had no idea how to deal with the aftermath.

Edited 2014-12-21 06:01 (UTC)

It took Nico a bit to center herself again, make sure all traces of any blush whatsoever had faded. She extended one leg and prodded his nearer shin.

"Didn't you just finish that?" she said, smiling to take any sting out of her teasing. "I'm pretty sure that you just showed me how that one ends."

He grinned back.

"You are allowed to reread comics you know. Look at all the pretty pictures."

"You just read it," Nico said, still smiling. "Were you so absorbed in the plot that you forgot to look at the pretty pictures just now?"

No, he'd been distracted by the conversation and wanting her to realize she was pretty awesome and the fact he'd made her blush and the fact he'd blushed because he'd made her blush.

"I would've been distracted by the plot if it had one."

Confirming that maybe something else had distracted him.

Edited 2014-12-21 06:44 (UTC)

"Then I hope the pictures are really pretty," Nico teased, "to be worth a second look."

She readjusted her grip on her sewing. "Sounds like it's not worth me asking to borrow it."

[LN] Beat of His Own Drums [Open]

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